From Justin Through Clement of Alexandria
Thomas Allen
[Reference Note: As this article relies primarily on First Three Centuries by Alvan Lamson, page numbers enclosed in parentheses are to Lamson’s book. References to other works are enclosed in parentheses with the work’s title or the author’s name listed in “References” at the end of this article.]
From Justin to Clement of Alexander
Like Justin, the Fathers who followed were not Trinitarians. They did not believe in an undivided, coequal, coeternal three being God.
Tatian (c. 120 – c. 180) was a theologian and a sophist, who taught rhetoric and philosophy. He was educated in the Greek religion and philosophy and was a disciple of Justin Martyr. Sometime after his conversion to Christianity, he founded an ascetic and heretical sect.
Tatian described “God alone as without beginning, invisible, ineffable, the original cause of all things visible and invisible” (p. 116). He does not apply this description to the Son. His concept of the Logos was similar to Justin’s. However, Tatian did not distinctly associates the Logos with Christ. Nevertheless, he did assert “that God was born in the form of man” (p. 117n). “Tatian regarded the Son as originally and from eternity in and with God, not as a real being or person, but only as an attribute, or by virtue of his power of begetting him; in him and with him, only as all things created were; that is, not as the actual, but as the possible” (p. 116). According to Tatian, the Son had a beginning as a real substance or person; the Father produced the Son. Moreover, after his production, the Son was “a being distinct from the Father, and subordinate to him” (p. 116).
Theophilus of Antioch (d. 183-5) was the Bishop of Antioch (c. 169 – c. 183). In regards to the Father and the Son, he taught a doctrine similar to Tatian. He described “God as Supreme, ‘the true and only God,’ ‘without beginning’ ‘invisible,’ ‘unbegotten’ and, as such, immutable” (p. 118). The Son he described “as inferior, having, as a real being or person, a beginning, ‘visible,’ ‘begotten,’ and therefore, according to his philosophy, not possessing the attribute of immutability” (p. 118).
According to Theophilus, the Logos was with God Himself; the Logos of God was what reason was in man. This Logos was God’s helper in creation, and through the Logos as His minister, God made all things.
Moreover, God the Father “‘cannot be confined to space, or be found in place’” (p. 118). The theophanies in the Old Testament were the Logos, that is, the Son. (However, Theophilus did not apply his concept of the Logos to Christ.)
About the Logos, Theophilus wrote, “‘Of him, before the creation, God took counsel, he being his own reason, or wisdom. And when he willed to create what he had designed, he begot this Logos, the emitted first-born of every creature; not emptying himself of Logos (Reason), but begetting it, and always holding converse with his own Logos (Reason).’ Thus the uttered or begotten Logos or Reason of God became a real person, having a proper subsistence in himself, without diminishing, or taking from, God’s understanding, Logos or Reason” (pp. 118-119). In this way, Theophilus made a marked distinction between the internal and begotten Logos.
Furthermore, Theophilus contended that only the true God, the Father, was to be worshiped. He believed that the Son was “begotten, or produced from the reason of the Father, a little before the creation of the world; thus becoming a distinct being subject to the will of the Father, and not entitled to equal adoration” (p. 119).
“Theophilus was the first Christian writer who used the term ‘Trias,’ Trinity, in reference to the Deity: but it is deserving of remark, that, to adopt the modern phraseology, the three ‘distinctions,’ or three ‘somewhats,’ designated by it, are, according to him, ‘God, his Logos, and his Wisdom’” (p. 120). By Wisdom, he may have meant Spirit, though Spirit was usually considered synonymous with the Logos or Word. Yet he did not assert that the three were equal.
Athenagoras (c. 133 – c. 190) was a Greek philosopher who converted to Christianity, after which he wrote apologies for Christians and a treatise on the Resurrection. According to Athenagoras, the Son of God “‘is the Logos (Reason) of the Father in idea and operation.’ ‘Through it all things were made.’ ‘The Son of God is the understanding and reason of the Father.’ ‘God from the beginning being eternal reason, had in himself the Logos (Reason), being always rational’” (pp. 121-122). Thus, the “attribute reason, or wisdom, was eternal, but not the Son as a personal being” (p. 122).
Like most of the other ante-Nicene Fathers, Athenagoras maintained the supremacy of the Father, who was “‘unbegotten and eternal’ [and who] created all things by his Logos, or Reason” (p. 122). To Athenagoras, the Holy Spirit was “something flowing out from God, as rays flow from the sun, and are re-absorbed, that is, not as a person, but an influence” (p. 123). The Logos “is the eternal reason of God. . . . The Holy Spirit is the Divine Wisdom, the bond of unity between the Father and the Son” (Pressense, p. 250).
Irenaeus (130 – 202) became the Bishop of Lyons in 177. He wrote five books against the Gnostic heretics. Unlike most Christian writers of his era, he avoided abstract metaphysics of the Platonist Fathers.
According to Irenaeus, the Son had a second existence and was inferior to the Father. However, he did not discuss the mode of the Son’s generation because he considered it inexplicable. No one knew the Son’s generation except “‘the Father who begat and the Son who was begotten’” (p. 124). However, in his arguments against Gnosticism, he connected the Son with the terms “always” and “eternal.”
Always, he was careful “to distinguish the Son from the ‘One true and only God,’ who is ‘supreme over all,’ and ‘besides whom there is no other’” (p. 124). The Father is above all and is the head of Christ. Further, he declared that the Church “‘has received from the Apostles and their disciples this belief in one God the Father, supreme over all . . . and in one Jesus Christ . . . and in the Holy Spirit, that through the prophets preached the dispensations.’” (p. 125). Thus, the “Father ‘sends,’ the ‘Son is sent:’ the Father ‘commands,’ the Son executes, ministering to his will. The Father grants, the Son receives, power and dominion” (p. 125). Consequently, Irenaeus did not conceive “of the Son as numerically the same Being with the Father, or as, in any sense, his equal” (p. 125).
Like the Apostolic Fathers, Irenaeus held that Jesus Christ had one nature and that he “suffered in his whole nature” (p. 126). Jesus was the Logos of God, and the Logos became flesh and suffered. Thus, Jesus “suffered in his most exalted nature” (p. 127). (Modern Trinitarians maintain that Jesus Christ has two natures, divine and human. Whenever Jesus fails to act divinely, such as his lack of omniscience in not knowing the time of the end [Mark 8:32], Trinitarians claim that he was acting in his human nature. Also, only Jesus’ human nature died on the cross because God, being eternal, cannot die. Thus, this dual nature of Christ gives them an easy escape in ignoring or explaining away the clear teachings of the Bible that contradict their dogma.) “Like the old Fathers generally, before the time of Origen, Irenaeus did not attribute to the Saviour a rational human soul but supposed that the Logos supplied the place of it” (p. 127). He held “1. That the Son was really divine; 2. That this divine element was perfectly joined to humanity in Jesus Christ” (127n). Thus, Christ was “God, God and man” (p. 127n).
Tertullian (c. 155 – c. 240) was a presbyter and later became a Montanist. He has been called “the father of Latin Christianity” and “the founder of Western theology.” (Montanists believed that the Spirit of truth, the Paraclete whom Jesus had promised in the Gospel of John, was manifesting himself to the world through Montanist prophets; they also taught a rigorous legalistic moralism and asceticism.)
Tertullian maintained the supremacy of the Father. However, he believed “that the Son is entitled to be called God, on the principle, that ‘whatever is born of God is God,’ just as one born of human parents is human” (p. 129). Although he states that the Son possessed “‘unity of substance’ with God” (p. 129), Tertullian “never meant to express a numerical unity of essence, but only a specific, that is, a common nature” (p. 129). He supposed that “the Son to be in some sort divine by virtue of his birth, and of one substance with God, as he is a spirit, and God is spirit. At the same time, he regarded him as a different being from the Father, that is, numerically distinct from him” (p. 129). However, this distinction did make two Gods: “‘[T]he Son is subordinate to the Father as he comes from him as the principle, but is never separated’” (p. 130n). Still, “God and Christ are two things, two species, two forms” (p. 130). Tertullian observed, “‘The Father is different from the Son (another), as he is greater; as he who begets is different from him who is begotten; he who sends, different from him who is sent; he who does a thing, different from him by whom (as an instrument) it is done’” (p. 130). Furthermore, the Son is inferior to the Father. According to Tertullian, “‘The Father is a whole substance; the Son a derivation, and portion of the whole, as he professes, saying, “The Father is greater than I”’” (p. 131).
Although he admits to “the pre-existence of the Son, [he] expressly denies his eternity” (p. 131). He states, “‘There was a time when the Son was not.’ . . . ‘Before all things, God was alone.’ . . . [N]othing existed without or beyond himself. ‘Yet he was not alone; for he had his own reason, which was in himself, with him. For God is rational’ a being endued with reason” (p. 131). Moreover, the Father was “‘more ancient, nobler, and more powerful than the Son’” (p. 132).
Nevertheless, after he became a Montanist, he described the Godhead in terms approaching the modern Trinity Doctrine. He wrote, “‘All are of one, by unity of substance; while the mystery of the dispensation is still guarded which distributes the unity into a Trinity, placing in their order the three, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; three, however . . . not in substance but in form; not in power but in appearance, for they are of one substance and one essence and one power, inasmuch as He is one God from whom these degrees and forms and aspects are reckoned under the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.’ He describes these distinctions of the Godhead as ‘persons,’ meaning by the word not our [Trinitarians] usage in the sense of personalities, but forms of manifestation” (Walker, p. 69). (Did he come to this conclusion by studying the Scriptures or was it a special revelation to a Montanist?) Ironically, while some Trinitarians claim Tertullian’s Montanist statement supports the Trinity Doctrine, others claim that Montanists were hostile to Trinitarian ideas — even Tertullian, expressed his disdain toward Trinitarians with his Monarchian explanation of the trinity.
Tertullian also believed Christ consisted of two natures: divine and human. “We see His double state, not intermixed but conjoined in one person, Jesus, God and man” (Walker, p. 69).
To the objections that he and the others like him were advocating two or three Gods, Tertullian replied that the number and deposition of the Trinity were not a division of the unity. His solution was a monarchy. Monarchy was “one rule or dominion, but may be administered through many officials; or the monarch may associate his son with him, all power still emanating from him. The monarchy then remains. So with the divine monarchy” (p. 134-135). The heavenly King’s use of “‘the Son and Spirit, who are second and third to him, and of a similar nature as begotten of his substance’” (p. 135) does not destroy the monarchy. Tertullian noted “that the Son does ‘nothing without the Father’s will;’ that all his ‘power was received from the Father’ who granted it.” Under Tertullian’s explanation, Christ lacks supreme divinity and numerical identity with the Father. Tertullian’s unity is that “the Son was of Divine origin, and his will always harmonized with the will of the Father, which is no unity at all in the later Athanasian [Trinitarian] sense” (p. 135).
Hippolytus (170 – 235) was a Roman presbyter and Bishop of Pontus and an apologist for what was the considered orthodoxy. About 220, he wrote A Refutation of All Heresies.
About the Trinity, Hippolytus believed in strict subordination. “He asserted that ‘God caused the Logos to proceed from him when he would and as he would’” (p. 238). He believed in “the superiority of the Father, and the dependent and derived nature of the Son” (p. 212). Like other ante-Nicene Fathers, he believed that God used a subordinate being or instrument in creating the world; this subordinate being was the Logos, the Son: “‘This sole and universal God first, by his cogitation, begets the Word (Logos), . . . the indwelling Reason of the universe.’ — ‘When he (the Logos) came forth from Him who begat him, being his first-begotten speech, he had in himself the ideas conceived by the Father. When, therefore, the Father commanded that the world should be, the Logos accomplished it in detail, pleasing God’” (p. 213). Thus, “God is the Original: he commands, and the Son, or Logos performs” (p. 213). Yet, the Logos “is not confounded with the world, since it exists antecedently to it, and proceeds not from nothing, but from the Father Himself, . . . but He does not possess a distinct existence from all eternity. He exists first as the creative thought, then He becomes the instrument of creation, the sovereign agent of the Divine will, to call into life contingent beings. He is thus a person, not simply an idea” (Pressense, pp. 406-407). Hippolytus conceived of the Logos to be a person, not simply an idea. The Father alone produced the Logos “not simply as an utterance or sound, but as the inner thought of the universe” (Pressense, p. 407).
To explain away the appearance of two Gods, Hippolytus declared, “‘There are not, then, two Gods, but one God in two persons. The third economy is the grace of the Holy Spirit.’ The Father commands, the Son obeys, the Holy Spirit enlightens. The Father is over all, the Son acts by all, the Holy Spirit is in all” (Pressense, p. 408). (Later, following Hippolytus’ method of a mere assertion to reduce two Gods to one, the Trinitarians would reduce three Gods to one by merely declaring them to be one God.)
The Fathers between Justin Martyr and Clement of Alexandria introduced the thought of a trinity. Also, they advanced the notion of God’s reason, the Logos, which or who later became the Son and Christ, existing from eternity with the Father. Thus, they continued the Platonization of Christianity.
However, they still maintained the supremacy of the Fathers and the subordination of the Son and struggle with the notion of two Gods, ditheism, or three Gods, tritheism. Moreover, like most earlier Fathers, most continued to “believed that Christ did not possess a human rational soul, the Logos supplying its place” (p. 135).
Clement of Alexandria
Clement of Alexandria (c. 150 – c. 215) was a philosopher before he became a Christian. He was a presbyter and became the head of the Catechetical or Theological School in Alexandria. He advanced the application of Greek philosophy, primarily that of Plato and the Stoics, to Christianity. As Philo had interpreted Judaism by philosophy into scientific dogma, so Clement interpreted Christianity. He was somewhat gnostic as he was inclined to equate knowledge of and about God to salvation. (Later, many clergymen would act the same way when they thought that salvation depended on believing the Trinity Doctrine.)
His residence was Alexandria, where “the Jewish, the Oriental, and the Grecian culture, mingled with the old Egyptian superstitions” (p. 140). The people of these cultures were generally hostile to the religion of Jesus. Also, the home of Philo and the Platonist school were in Alexandria.
Clement believed that the Son existed before the world. Although he gave the Son the title God, he did not ascribe to him supreme, underived divinity. Moreover, like the other early Fathers, he did not believe that the Son had a personal existence from the beginning.
“The Fathers ascribed to the Son a sort of metaphysical or potential existence in the Father: that is, they supposed that he existed in him from all eternity as an attribute his logos, reason, or wisdom; that, before the formation of the world, this attribute acquired by a voluntary act of the Father a distinct personal subsistence, and became his instrument in the creation” (pp. 148-149). Likewise, Clement held that the Logos was the reason or wisdom of God. That is, the Logos was an attribute of the Father.
Moreover, the Son was inferior to the Father. (For passages from Clement’s writings asserting the Son’s inferiority, see Lamson, pp. 150-151. For additional description of God the Father, the Logos, and the Son and their relationship, see Pressense, pp. 257-260.) “Clement believed God and the Son to be numerically distinct; in other words, two beings, the one supreme, the other subordinate” (p. 150). He conceived of the Son, or Logos, as the image of God as man is the image of man. Thus, his view of the Logos was like that of his predecessors. Like them, he had no concept of the eternal generation of the Son as do Trinitarians.
To Clement, the Logos was “the source of all the intelligence and morality of the human race — the teacher of mankind everywhere” (Walker, p. 78). God was the giver of philosophy to the Greeks. He declared, “‘For this was a schoolmaster to bring the Hellenic mind, as the law the Hebrews, to Christ” (Walker, p. 78). Moreover, his “view of Christ’s life is almost Docetic” (Walker, p. 78). (Docetists believed “that Jesus Christ had appeared as a phantom form, that he had not had a real or natural body, and that his crucifixion had only been an illusion. . . . Consequently, Christ’s resurrection and ascension into heaven were denied” [“Docetism”]. Thus, “. . . Christ only ‘appeared’ or ‘seemed[’] to be a man, to have been born, to have lived and suffered” [Arendzen].)
Clement advanced the notion that being from the Father, who is the supreme God, the Son was God. Since he was from God, his nature was divine. Also, he encouraged the use of Greek philosophy in understanding the Scriptures.
References
Alford, H.W. The Manual of the Scriptural Doctrine of the Trinity, Investigated and Defended. Dover, New Hampshire: The Trustees of the Freewill Baptist Connection, 1842.
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Lamson, Alvan. First Three Centuries: Or, Notices of the Lives and Opinions of Some of the Early Fathers, With Special Reference to The Doctrine of the Trinity. Reprint. and revised with notes, Ezra Abbot, editor: Boston, Mass.; 1875 reprinted with additional notes, Henry Ierson, editor: London: British and Foreign Unitarian Association,
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Pressense, E. De. The Early Years of Christianity: Heresy and Christian Doctrine. Translator Anne Harwood. New York: Nelson & Phillips, n.d.
“Q&A.” Grace in Focus. November/December 2017, page 46.
Walker, Williston. A History of the Christian Church. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1921.
Copyright © 2017 by Thomas Coley Allen.
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